Turning Point
by XsilverXdoeX
Summary: The day that Harry turned up on the doorstep of Number Four, Privet Drive.


Morning light drifted through the window and found me, happy. Well, no, not exactly happy. Even if Vernon had not brought up Lily the day before, I always felt uneasy around Halloween and I'm afraid that Trick-or-Treaters dressed as witches never got quite as much candy. Especially the ones with green skin and warts. The only witch I had known was very far from ugly, and I'd always envied her for it. I'm afraid I've lied twice, I was not quite happy and although the morning light may have drifted through the window and found me, it is not what woke me. I was awakened by the standard alarm, from just across the hall, "MuummMMYY!"

I swung my legs out of the bed and glanced at Vernon, chest still heaving with restful snores. As I crossed the hall to little, sixteen-month-old Dudders, I smiled. It was a Saturday, so Vernon would be home. I had my Diddlekins and Vernon and no plans, errands or deeds to do. Just cleaning and Duddles. The chubby blonde baby was jumping up and down in his crib and waving his fat little arms this way and that, crying, "Down! Down! Down!" With a hand beneath each arm, I picked him up and held him against me, but he no longer let me hold him and cried more insistently, "DOWN! DOWN!" So I set him onto his unsteady, but impatiently kicking feet and followed him downstairs.

He scampered into the living room and switched on the Tele. Such a clever child, taught himself to turn it on without anyone's help. I went into the kitchen and set the water to boil for my and Vernon's tea. Dudderkins would be drinking milk, as he always did, although he insisted he didn't like it, but drank it greedily anyway. It was a brisk, chilly morning so I didn't rush to bring in the milk bottles when I retrieved the morning post. I looked through the envelopes as I walked back to the kitchen and set them on the table. There was a card from Marge to Diddles wishing him a happy Halloween. I let go a sigh of relief when I was done and there was nothing from Lily. Surely, if anything had happened that would reach Privet Drive, she would have written. I realized at once that Lily wouldn't be using our post; she'd have sent a filthy bird, but still am glad to not have been contacted by her.

Duddles ran in and held his round little belly and said, in a clear, greedy voice, "Hungry!"

I patted his head, "Don't worry, little Diddlykins, I'm going to make you some breakfast now, alright baby?"

Little eyes glinted angrily back at me and I wasn't sure if he didn't understand what I'd said, was unsure about what I'd choose to cook or simply disliked to being called Diddlykins. He then shrugged and ran back to the living room. I looked out of the kitchen window and saw that the woman in Number Six was taking her dog out into her lawn to do his business. My lip curled in disgust. Dogs, in my opinion, were always revolting animals that made too much mess and never repaid their master's hospitality. I looked away when Duddler came back and cried out, "Mummy! _Hungry!_"

"Okay, Dudders." I picked him up and placed him in the highchair that was beginning to seem too tight for him. He pouted as I left the room and walked back to the front door.

I opened the door and nearly dropped dead of shock. I slammed the door shut again so hard that I heard the milk bottles rattle and wobble before toppling over and shattering. And then he started to cry. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened the door very slowly and cautiously. The baby wailed and kicked his little feet and punched the air. Held tightly in one tiny fist was an envelope and the scarlet wax seal on it would have answered the questions rushing through my head, had I needed it to.

_Kneel down. Reach. Pick it up. Pretend it's not a baby. It's not Lily's son. It's just a bundle of cloth. Pick it up, Petunia, pick it up._ But I couldn't. I just yelled as loud as I could, "Vernon!"

Soon he came down the stairs, his eyes still dazed with sleep, "What's got you hollering, Petunia?" he was coming closer, "What's wrong, did that bloke forget our milk again?" he could almost see the stoop so I pointed, "He did, oh, I'll show—" Vernon's voice caught and he asked hoarsely, "P-Petunia…_what is that?_"

I met his eyes, "A bad sign."

"Well, bring him in. It's a cold morning." I was stunned by Vernon's uncharacteristic compassion, but forced myself to obey and take the squirming baby into my arms.

When we got into the kitchen, Diddly's impatience had sent him back to the cartoons he liked to watch. I'd never know quite how he got down from the highchair. I set the baby on the table and looked at Vernon. He asked me, "That's your sister's son?" I nodded, "The one I heard folk talking about yesterday?" I nodded again, "Well, what the bloody hell is he doing here?"

"I-I don't know."

"The letter." He said.

I tore the envelope open neatly with shaking hands.

-

"Mummy," Diddles cried and pointed a stubby finger at the baby, "What that? What that?"

"It is nothing, Dudley, run along." Vernon growled and Diddlekins ran into another room. Vernon punched the table like a priest in the fervor of a sermon. The baby continued bawling, "We should have _known_, Petunia, that this would happen!"

"_Known_?" I looked at my husband incredulously, "How in Pete's sake, could we have _known_?"

"With your mad sister and her fool of a husband, we should have known one of _their lot_ would end up coming after them!" Vernon snarled over the sound of the baby's sobbing, "We should have expected them to get themselves blown up by some nutter with a pretty name for himself!"

"And what could we have done about it? Run away?" Vernon nodded, "They would find us, Vernon; it isn't that easy to get away from these people!"

"We've kept our distance from that sister of yours well enough!"

"Did you read a _word_ of this letter?" I brandished the rough yellowed paper under his nose, "She and James were in hiding, _of course we were away from them!_"

"Well, we aren't taking him." Vernon said, crossing his arms stubbornly over his broad chest.

"What?"

"We're not taking the stupid boy!" Vernon replied, his face a deep magenta, "We'll cart him off to the nearest orphanage and we can go on with our lives."

"He'll die if we do that!" I exclaimed before I even had time to think. It wasn't happening. I wasn't sure why, but I _knew_ that I would not sit back and watch while the crying orphan was abandoned by his last relatives. I knew we would be taking him in, "I mean, he…Vernon, he's my sister's only son!"

"Your sister was no good and she asked for what she got if you ask me! That louse of a husband, didn't protect her, did he now? She made her own choices and she got her reward!" Vernon's voice had grown cold and insensitive, retaining no trace of the tenderness he had shown before, "Don't try to fool me, Petunia, you hated your sister!"

_No, I didn't. I loved Lily like everyone did. I never hated Lily. I was jealous, I was angry, I was spiteful, but I never truly hated her._

"But, Vernon, the boy…in the letter it said that he will die unless we take him!" I tried.

"_I will not have a freak living under my roof!!"_ Vernon shouted and the baby let out a particularly loud sob, which Vernon ignored.

"Vernon, we're taking him." I said in a firm tone.

"Petunia—"

"_We are taking the boy!_"

"Y-you want him, Petunia?" Vernon asked, dumbfounded, "You want him?"

"I don't want him, Vernon; I _want_ him to grow up with his own family, but as they are dead…" I took a deep breath as though I was having trouble getting my quota of oxygen, "I don't _want_ the boy, Vernon, but I _have to_ take him. I _have to._"

He looked for a moment as if he would start shouting again but instead he just sighed and pushed out his chair and said, "I'm going for a walk." And Vernon left the house.

I looked down at the baby on the table, still yowling. This time I was not reluctant to touch him. I took the wriggling baby into my arms as I had his mother a million years before, when we had been innocent children, before anything came between us. I made the same soft _shushh_ing noise that I had with Lily and Diddles. He was warm and fragile in my arms and it was hard to believe that someone wanted to kill him. Whatever anyone could say, he was only a baby. I moved my palm in a circular pattern on his back and finally his weeping quieted and I realized my own cheeks were wet. I wiped the cut upon his forehead clean and looked down at him.

For the first time, I was looking at him properly, when he was neither asleep nor weeping. And Lily's eyes were looking back. It was now that I knew the tears I shed were for her, only twenty-one and murdered. Gone. And all because of her precious magic. The thing that she had had that I never could have, that had made me the boring, useless sister, always cast in her shadow. The thing that had torn us apart. The thing that had made the helpless infant in my arms an orphan. Magic had always only ruined things and broke things and gotten in the way. I hated magic, and not out of envy as once I had. I hated magic simply because it had destroyed so much and brought me nothing but sorrow.

"It won't reach you; it won't get you, too. You won't be like Lily; we'll stamp it out of you." I whispered to the baby with my sister's eyes, "I won't let magic do to you what it's done to me." I swept some of the scarce, silky black hair into place, but it sprang into an odd angle again at once, "I'm going to protect you better than I protected her. I'll keep you safe, Harry."

He shut his eyes and fell asleep, warm and comforted, blissfully unaware and untouched by the knowledge that I would never speak a single kind word to him again.

-Fin


End file.
